Teachers as brokers: adding a university-society perspective to higher education teacher competence profiles
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Teachers as brokers: adding a university-society perspective to higher education teacher competence profiles Carla Oonk, et al. [full author details at the end of the article] # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
Higher education institutions are increasingly engaged with society but contemporary higher education teacher competence profiles do not include university-society oriented responsibilities of teachers. Consequently, comprehensive insights in university-society collaborative performance of higher education teachers are not available. This study empirically develops a teacher profile for an exemplary university-society oriented, multi-stakeholder learning environment and builds an argument for university-society collaborative additions to existing higher education teacher profiles. A showcase example of a new university-society collaborative, multi-stakeholder learning environment, the Regional Learning Environment (RLE), provides the context of analysis. Thirteen RLE establishments were included in the study. The study uses a descriptive qualitative design, triangulating data from RLE documents, teacher interviews and focus groups with teachers and managers on RLE teacher roles, tasks and competencies. The resulting RLE teacher profile comprises nine roles, nineteen tasks and 21 competencies. The new profile echoes scattered indications for teacher responsibilities as identified in previous studies on teaching and learning in university-society collaborative learning settings. The study argues that the role of broker, including boundary crossing competence, and the competency ‘stimulating a collaborative learning attitude’, might be added to existing higher education teacher competence profiles. Adding this university-society engaged perspective to existing teacher competence profiles will support higher education institutions in developing their university-society collaborative responsibilities and subsequent teacher professionalisation trajectories. Keywords Boundary crossing competence . Higher education . University-society engagement . Teacher competence profile
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-02000510-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Higher Education
Introduction Nowadays, higher education institutions are expected to be relevant to and engaged with society (OECD-IMHE 2012; European Union 2013). Society benefits from knowledge produced in academia, whereas higher education students and staff benefit from working on reallife projects to acquire professional skills and enrich their practical experience (Jacoby 2014; Scholz and Steiner 2015; Watson et al. 2011). However, collaboration and mutual learning between higher education institutions and society are demanding for institutional governance (Jongbloed et al. 2008), as well as for stakeholders, students and academic staff involved (e.g. Coates and Goedegebuure 2012; Webb and Burgin 2009; Yarime et al. 2012). The doors of universities, repre
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